


Colors of the World

by suzzzan



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Falling In Love, Fix-It, Happy Ending, Javert Dislikes Marius, Javert Lives, M/M, Middle Aged Virgins, Mutual Pining, Post-Seine, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, big chunks of 19th century dialogue, colorblind javert, god as a plot device, lots of comma splicing, that's why he's only in here for 3 seconds, thenardier is a boring villain, there's probably something in canon that contradicts that, well they're more like old crusty virgins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 03:52:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19455778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suzzzan/pseuds/suzzzan
Summary: Valjean looks down to find a golden Mark over his beating heart, only just visible under the collar of his loosely-buttoned linens. One might have said it looks like a pair of lips, an imprint of a golden kiss pressed to his skin.The same night, a gypsy woman gives birth to a boy in a prison. His mother laughs and holds him like a trophy, the Mark on his skin candlelight in the blackness of the cell.Or, the soulmate AU that no one asked for. (Seriously, no one asked for.)





	Colors of the World

**Author's Note:**

> I adore soulmate AU's—there can never be too many. This one's been inspired by literally all the ones in the fandom (I'm pretty sure at this point I've read all of them) and my capricious atheism. The canon I went off on is a Brick/musical mish mash, so fair warning: might cause confusion. Also, I struggle with writing plot, so if anything just view this as an exercise in... plotting?

Wheat is rarely golden. This, Jean Valjean learns of the fields in which he and his sister’s husband bury their father. They push the man, limbs tangled like twine after his fall from the tree, into a three-foot grave, then shovel the dirt back onto his body, leaving no marker to show where he lies—and _then_ , that is when it happens.

The Mark sears itself onto the boy, Jean Valjean’s, chest, right above the heart under his left collarbone. Except, he does not know its place yet; there is, at one moment, nothing but the simple, unprotested grief of a peasant coursing through his veins, and the next—liquid fire.

Jean Valjean crumples to the ground, seizing his chest. The whole of his upper body is aflame with the touch from the Lord, though he does not know that’s what the Marks are sometimes called yet. He may let out a scream.

When the pain subsides, Jean Valjean finds himself on his knees. His brother stands to one side, unconcerned.

“Ah, so yours is there.”

Valjean looks down to find a golden Mark over his beating heart, only just visible under the collar of his loosely-buttoned linens. One might have said it looks like a pair of lips, an imprint of a golden kiss pressed to his skin, but Valjean can draw up nothing but confusion at the sight of it.

“What—”

“It’s your Mark,” his brother tells him.

This is what they know of the Marks: some people are blessed with them, and some are not. The Lord bestows them upon a matched pair at the same time, in the same shape and same place on their bodies. If the pairs meet and Touch, skin to skin, their Marks will sear again (though not as painfully as the first time) and turn red, indicating that their bond has been formed and the Lord’s plan fulfilled. If one in the pair should die, the other’s Mark will turn black.

These matched pairs are called soulmates.

His brother says, “One day you may meet a nice girl like my Jeanne who shares your Mark. You’ll marry her and have many children. But until then, think nothing of it.”

Jean Valjean bows his head so that he does not have to see the red blemish on his brother’s forearm, the same Mark that his sister shares. Because they are poor, and they cannot afford to have idle hands caused by heads full of fantasies. So Jean Valjean bows his head among the grey wheat, so low that his unruly hair brushes the dirt, and cries for his father—but also prays for the Mark on his chest.

The boy is eleven.

***

The same night, a gypsy woman gives birth in a prison. The boy that is pushed out of her womb mimics the quiet dawn he’s born in, a hard-won dawn that has followed the hours of shrieks and stuttered groans of labor. He is a baby that does not wail or cry, only suckles silently and immediately. His mother laughs and holds him like a trophy, the Mark on his skin candlelight in the blackness of the cell.

She calls him Javert because it is the only name she knew his father by.

***

Jean Valjean works sunrise to sunset, the same even after his sister’s husband dies, and her Mark turns as black as the night in which he passes away; Jean Valjean wears his cravats untied, or forgoes them so that, should anyone pass by who recognized his Mark, they should see it, faint gold against his dirty work shirt; Jean Valjean prays to God when his sister and her children are asleep, asks the Lord to keep his beloved in good health, and happy, and asks that he should meet them soon, at least before he dies (he heard that word—beloved—once on the streets, uttered by a well-dressed gentleman to his daughter, and he liked the way it felt warm in his ear, so he named his soulmate that to distinguish them).

Because plenty have Marks, and plenty do not—but also plenty of those with Marks do not live to see them turn red.

The men he works with say, “But, ah, that Valjean’s head is full of smoke and fancies. He’s silly to think he won’t die before he meets ‘er.”

The women of the village laugh as he goes past. Some shout that they will marry him if he asks; he chooses not to hear them.

Jeanne, his sister, calls him empty, like a cracked egg. “If I picked you up by the ankles and shook you like I did when we were young,” she spits at him, “nothing would come out—not even your brains!”

But Valjean keeps his habits of praying and working, head down, as he turns decidedly from boy to man.

At night he dreams of his beloved on the street before him. They are faceless, yet he recognizes them. He steps forward and Touches them, brings their knuckles to his lips, feels heat blossom in his heart. The warmth follows him out of sleep, and he wakes with the ghost of a smile and the whisper of someone’s skin on his lips, a thumb pressed to the Lord’s kiss on his breast, tracing, tracing, aching.

He is already in love.

***

Javert grows up into something iron, fueled by thin gruel and memories of the prison cell he vows he’ll never return to. He forgets his mother as early as he can—and the Mark upon his skin. For him, it is a brand. Reminds him of his fettered condition at birth, and he never looks upon it.

“This means,” his mother had said, touching him like he’s something to be revered, tracing his Mark like it’s celestial, “that you will be loved, my darling. That you will be _happy_.”

“I do not want to be happy,” he snaps back at her. “I want to be feared.”

On the brink of manhood, he’s taller than most. The other gamins cower away from him. He scowls wherever he goes, and he makes no friends. When he has grown too tall and too big to be delivering letters for the police anymore, he requests to join their ranks.

He is turned away again and again, until finally, he is asked, “Bah! What does a street urchin like you know of justice?”

He forgets his mother and her softness. He only becomes—black and white, that which the law requires.

“It’s true, what you call me. I am a street urchin,” he answers, without feeling. “I have lived on these streets all my life, and so, I have learned what is unfair—and by default what is also fair. I may have been born out of chaos, but the status of my birth has convinced me to pursue order. I have watched your men my whole life; I know what it is they do. I am alone in the world. You’ll cut no ties nor form new ones by taking me in.”

And so, he’s given a chance, more out of convenience than anything. The commissioner tells him, “One mistake, and you’re back to the gutters, boy.”

Javert sets his jaw.

***

The summer slips into winter, and suddenly there’s no work to be found for a tree pruner.

Jean Valjean dreams of kissing his beloved. Slow, unhurried kisses left on their skin like sunlight, like a gift. He kisses them behind the bakery in the village, surrounded by the fragrance of fresh-baked bread, wrists pressed to pulse together—

And wakes cold and hungry.

In his dreams, he’s lying with them on newly fallen snow, and he kisses the red of their nose, the bluster of their cheeks, and their Marks throb in tandem with their hearts. He loves them as bright as the light reflecting off the crystals of snow—

Mother Jeanne berates him for allowing her children to starve. He knows she doesn’t mean the foul things she says to her own little brother, but they are all hungry. And he is so tired…

Dreams of laughing, falling into a river, his body entwining with his beloved’s in an eternal dance—

The children are starving!

In desperation, Valjean does what all in his circumstance are wont to do. He steals from a bakery—and is caught, of course, sent to Toulon, and does not dream for the next nineteen years.

***

The first time Javert learns of color, he has just become a guard at Toulon. A nice, smooth-faced officer tells him his sideburns are handsome with a laugh Javert can’t decide is supposed to be patronizing or innocuous, then exclaims in shock when he learns Javert can’t read.

“Well, I’ll teach you!” the nice officer declares.

“If you feel obliged,” Javert says.

After their shifts, they gather by lantern light. The nice officer has many friends among the guards, Javert learns, who crowd around and yell boisterously and drink whatever alcohol they have at hand. They don’t mind if Javert is too quiet or surly.

The nice officer hands him two books “on philosophy,” he describes. “Let’s start with the red one.”

And Javert, suddenly, is afraid. Because the word “red” is a key that he has no lock for, in his mind. He doesn’t move, only scowls down at the books for quite a while.

“Well, then, perhaps the green one,” the officer says, perplexed, but nicely.

“What is this—mockery?” Javert snarls.

His outburst strikes fear into the other guards; they are not drunk enough yet. But the nice officer only has to say a few words that make them laugh, and they return to their drink.

“You can’t see color?” he asks Javert.

Javert growls at him, but he only says few soft words, and Javert (he can’t understand it) relaxes, re-dons his customary frown.

This is what Javert learns: the Lord gives some people useless Marks and others different gifts. This nice officer employs words as his chief weapon, smiles as his secondary. All this comes together and is called charisma by the ladies, the other guards say. The only thing Javert knows is that this nice officer brings about peace with his entire demeanor—it’s even enough to pacify _Javert_ —and Javert supposes peace is a form of justice, anyway.

And so, he admits, “I suppose not.”

It’s a sort of test at first, and then it might be able to be attributed to friendship. Javert has never had a friend before. He wonders if he can call this nice officer his friend. Blue, he names their uniforms blue. The convicts’ smocks he calls red. (Polar opposites, white and black, Javert thinks, the world so clearly delineated.) Epileptic moss growing on the hulls of moored ships is green, and lemons are yellow.

“Marks are gold, before a matched pair Touches, that is,” the officer informs him, “then they turn red.”

“Damn the Marks,” Javert snaps. Then, “There seems to be a lot of things that are red.”

And so there is. Blood is red. Fire is red. War is red. Anger is red. Love is red. They spend years playing that game. The game of colors.

Stumbling, the nice officer also teaches him to read and write during those years they share at Toulon. His smiles are all softness in the candlelight they study by, and gradually Javert learns why that nice officer is never put on guard duty, instead assigned the brunt of the paperwork, and the only time he’s instructed to approach the _salles_ is to bolt all the doors in the evenings. In that clean, unshaven face, Javert learns two truths of the world: those who are leaders among civilised men are also more inclined to become victims of violence. And peace is not just.

The riot… just happens, early one morning, and he—

Javert’s friend—

He’s not supposed to be near it. But that nice officer wades into the midst of it, the throng of criminals thrashing each other around, his nightstick raised as plea for ceasefire, never intends to bring it down—

He’s _trampled_ —

And the blows rain down on him—

And Javert—Javert and all the other guards that nice officer called friends—they’re too late. Javert yells his name.

When they clear the convicts away, there’s just a body, the blood pooled around his head still warm. Javert says his name, quietly, expecting an answer. When there is none, he remembers that blood and anger are both red.

This is not just. This man, who never erred in his life, beaten to death by the very people he was working to save, is not just. What’s just is deducing which convict dealt the killing blow and watching his head fly off under the guillotine. Punishment—that is just.

Javert learns: justice is not kind, nor does it smile. Justice is unflinching and feared by those who seek to thwart it.

He reads philosophy by candlelight, not knowing or caring which book he holds; he lashes convicts in a cold fury for every misstep they take before his eyes, carves the red memory of their pain into his mind. He grows more into a wolf with a wooden heart by the day.

Convicts come and leave, and Javert never forgets a face. He is their eternal punishment. Through punishment, Javert teaches each of them about the tainted redness that they wear, too, just beneath their skin, teaches them that they will never escape the chains around their throats and wrists and ankles. Just as Lucifer fell, they are incorruptible in their blackness of heart. There is no salvation, not for them—and that is the truth, and that is just.

Javert is rewarded for his performance with a promotion as inspector to a rundown hamlet called Montreuil-sur-Mer. He rides as soon as he learns the news, without a word of farewell to the other guards, leaves with only the letter containing his instructions, the clothes on his back, and two identical books.

***

By this time, Jean Valjean has become M. Madeleine, and Montreuil’s reluctant mayor.

Monsieur le Maire buttons his shirts to the throat, ties his cravats with precision, hides his scars and his Mark under layers of coarse linen and wool. At night, he takes walks and gives alms to the homeless and destitute. The people of Montreuil chorus, “God bless you, Pere Madeleine!” When he prays, he asks the Lord’s mercy for fishwives, gamins, men seeking employment, and women of the night, but never for his beloved. Not anymore. He is, perhaps, a saint, but a martyred one at best.

What happened, then, to the tree pruner from Faverolles with stars in his eyes?

The answer is, as always, simple in retrospect. When Jean Valjean left Toulon on parole, he possessed little of the things he arrived with. The wells in his eyes where tears had once been shed for Jeanne and her children were scorched by that nineteen-year drought. His mouth had forgotten how to smile, and was drawn in the displeased and horrifying way a beast from some vague nightmare is recalled. He did not know whether to damn the world or damn himself, and so he simply walked on. “What do I deserve?” Jean Valjean continually asked himself. “Nothing!”

The Bishop of Digne warmed enough of that dormant heart to teach Valjean otherwise, but still he could not believe. How could he—after nineteen years of playing the part of a shadow, a sort of half-man half-form that screams but does not feel pain, that belongs only in the space between Hell and every righteous man’s heel? You become that shadow.

And not even M. Madeleine, with all the strength of Jean le Cric in his shoulders, can overcome that shadow. “What do I deserve?” Monsieur le Maire continually asks himself. “Still nothing! Yet I will ensure that these good people, who have entrusted themselves to me, become a little more deserving.”

It is not that he does not hope—to Touch his beloved, to be in love, to hear his name ( _Jean Valjean_ ), unconditionally loved, uttered on another’s lips; it is that he believes himself unworthy.

In this condition, Valjean and Javert meet for the first time as men.

***

Javert convinces himself it is something else, the first time he steps into Monsieur le Maire’s office. The mayor, a suspected convict! Yes, a spectacular deduction, Javert!

But then—how does that explain the glances he can’t help but sneak at Madeleine when the mayor paces, admiring the mass of contradictions Madeleine embodies: granite shoulders and pearly smile, calloused hands and cloudy eyes? How does that explain the pull he feels to Madeleine, the desire to stumble after him each step Madeleine takes? And how does that explain the sensation that can only be described as _want_ broiling in Javert’s gut?

The explanation: the temperate weather, the smell of the sea. Madeleine’s hideous coat (that everyone describes as yellow, but that Javert can only say is the same shade as sunlight), Monsieur le Maire’s infinitely giving hands. Javert is remembering his mother again. The way she taught him to study the stars.

He does what he is best at. He forgets himself. The wayward path and the wants that lead him here, they are inconsequential. Javert is a statue. True justice is immovable.

He tells himself, the stars do not remind him of Madeleine’s twinkling eyes. They illuminate the uncanniness of the mayor’s resemblance to Jean Valjean, the limp in Madeleine’s step. They guide his way.

At last, there is the scent of a good trail.

***

Fantine’s Mark gives her locks of gold an entirely other meaning. With her hair shorn short, one can see it: a tight-fit crown of gold covering her scalp, ending just inside her hairline on all sides of her head. It is easily the purest thing Valjean has ever seen, and it astounds him. He suddenly remembers his own Mark, which he has never allowed himself to lay eyes on all this time he’s played mayor, and it gives a deep throb—or maybe it is his heart.

Monsieur le Maire and Javert tug at authority like two poles of a magnet. The stronger wins, and Fantine is taken to a hospital instead of a prison.

“Disgraceful—you would save even that whore!” Javert’s bark accompanies him all the way. _Whore whore whore_.

As he promises to bring her Cosette, Valjean wonders how such a once-demure creature as Fantine could love someone who was not her soulmate. Then, with sobering awareness, he realizes _that_ is what his beloved will do because of him. Or rather, without him. All the better for it, Valjean thinks. All the better to love someone who’s not a convict, even if that convict is one’s soulmate.

Then, Javert is asking—no, demanding—Monsieur le Maire to dismiss him, and then, there is the trial in Arras—Valjean cannot let either man go to ruin because of him—and he has no more time to think of soulmates or Marks.

The chase begins.

***

Cosette’s Mark shaped like a fingerprint on the side of her face, somewhere a lover would caress. After they leave the inn at Montfermeil, Valjean, shaking in his anger at the Thenardiers, cannot, for pity, take his eyes off her. When they flee from the police and Cosette lays her head in his lap and sleeps so soundly, as if being confined in a bumpy carriage with a convict is the safest place she’s ever been, Valjean cannot help but love her.

And when she calls him, “Papa”—

He answers, “Yes, my beloved”—

He is chained again, a slave to her every whim. It is not so bad. It is wonderful.

And so the years pass.

***

It is after they leave the convent, and Cosette’s head is beginning to fill with those fanciful notions every girl has a right to in their rosebud years, that she asks him:

“Why don’t you marry, Papa?”

To be asked such a question point blank! It’s obvious she’d been sitting on it for some time now. Cosette knows how to mold his suspicion like clay with her soft phrases and gentle questions until it is not suspicion any longer, but trust and contentment. To be truthful, Valjean has never thought of marriage; he doesn’t have the time. Every ounce of his brain power has gone into answering the question, “If they find me like this, how shall I escape, and with Cosette, too?” He has not been able to afford thinking or looking at anything _romantically_. Rather, he’s always on the lookout for a top hat, a flash of a wolfish grin, a hard-edged voice. Why doesn’t he marry? Hah! To him, that question sounds strange indeed!

“I suppose, my beloved girl,” he says, patting Cosette’s hand, “because I am already so happy.”

She frowns—but not before giving him half a fond smile that she cannot resist. “Haven’t you considered it, though? Haven’t you ever thought that you wanted to?”

“Ah, but I have everything I want already.”

***

It is after her Mark turns red (after some boy Touches her hand while giving her back her handkerchief, after she’s filled for a full day with so much joy Valjean thinks she’ll turn everything she touches to gold—it isn’t right that the gold of her Mark should be gone so quickly, he thinks—after, after, after his world as he knows it falls apart) that she asks him about _his_ Mark.

“I don’t have one,” he tells her.

“You do, Papa.” She holds his hands, his overflowing her dainty palms like water to a basin. “I can always tell when you’re lying to me.”

“But what does it matter, my beloved Cosette? Why do you ask?”

She bursts into tears. He embraces her; in his arms, she feels like a bird. “It is only—that,” she sniffs, “only you are so lonely! I can’t bear to see you like this, so despondent—and how will you live when I am gone? I’ve seen you left to your own devices. You eat black bread for weeks and don’t light a fire! Your plants get along better than you!”

“Cosette, my beloved child. I’ll manage. Believe me. For your sake, I’ll manage. You mustn’t worry. My beloved.”

He lets her go.

“If you must know, my Mark is still gold.”

Her tears only flow more freely.

***

Javert’s Mark starts to sting after the insurgents tie him in the martingale. It’s not the sear of a Touch, he knows even without having felt it. Rather, it’s a cold, pins-and-needles type of pain, like someone is chiseling into him with a very small pick, and sleet is lashing into his skin.

As he hangs there, the stinging, without warning, builds into a bone-deep throb, and then—

Jean Valjean enters the tavern.

***

When all of it is over, Jean Valjean discovers he does much more life-saving than he intends to.

Firstly, there’s the situation with Javert at the barricade.

“Damn you! It’s not you,” the inspector snarls when Valjean cuts him free. “I refuse—to believe—that it is you. But why does it hurt so?”

Valjean fires into the air. Javert leaves, breathing.

Then, there’s Marius. He spends a day trekking through the sewers for that boy to live. So long, in fact, that he breaks when Javert snaps:

“You’ve delivered a corpse!”

But he’s too tired to shout at anyone.

It’s not over. A third time: a bridge over the Seine, Javert’s face shrouded in fog. Valjean, when he puts a hand that begs _please_ on Javert’s elbow, finds that he does not learn the answers he’s come searching for: why Javert said, “I will wait for you here,” and instead left him be, made a moonlight pilgrimage through Paris to here, where the rushing Seine murmurs soft phrases of death.

Had he asked Javert what he was doing, Valjean would have received no reply.

You see, Valjean does not know he is saving his adversary’s life yet, does not know how close Javert came to jumping.

Javert is preoccupied with Valjean’s hand on his arm and the layers of greatcoat that separate skin from skin. And that is just the substance. His thoughts are quite incoherent. He’s not sure if he would have jumped, had Valjean not followed him. He thinks he had intended to. The general pervading feeling in his mind is, right now, of floating on a wide, open sea.

The stars are all but obscured by the city lights and fog. In the dark, one weary man guides another home.

***

The first month is the hardest. Valjean appears on Javert’s doorstep with a doctor, and Javert, articulately, tells Valjean to “go to Hell,” and throws tea on his cravat. Then, Javert abandons his apartment, and Valjean nearly tears Paris apart searching for him, only to find out that he relocated to smaller rooms just two floors below. “Why!” Javert spits when Valjean bursts into his apartment. “Did you ever consider that I don’t want your company?” At the same time, Valjean exclaims, “Good God, your portress didn’t care to let me know the state of filth you’re living in!”

It turns out, neither can resist the other’s gravity for long. Eventually Javert stops snarling at Valjean to, “Leave me alone, God damn you man,” and they can each finish a cup of tea without arguing. Eventually, the stone of worry in Valjean’s gut begins to grow lighter, and as winter rushes upon them, Javert finally succumbs to Valjean’s needling and accepts his gift of a new pair of gloves, begrudgingly attributing it not to pity, but to friendship, as Valjean claims. Eventually, they shake hands when they meet (though Javert keeps his gloves on, always) and go for walks along the Seine.

It is on a spring day, nearly a year after the fall of the barricades, that Valjean dares to ask, the worry stone rising high into his throat, “Why did you let me go free, that night?”

Javert glares. The pain of his Mark has receded into a dull ache, after Valjean led him down from the balustrade, but it seems to tug at him every time Valjean is near, as if reminding him of his weakness. The weakness that was born in Montreuil and never left him all these years, as much as he tries to forget it. And yet, he cannot spurn what it promises (oh, how he wants to!) for it is a brand, anchoring him to his past, which he has snarled and fought to overcome his entire life! But there is a stronger—an overpowering—want in him, conceived from a boy’s mind that heard the word _happiness_ in an unhappy prison and wanted so badly he could not admit it to himself.

But now, it is too late to admit such desires. As much as Javert has strived to be feared, he is still afraid. Surely, he cannot be more than a charity case to Valjean, a broken soul to coddle and water and watch grow like his garden. And Valjean, Javert has grasped, through some sparse words Valjean once uttered on the subject, is at the stage in his life where he believes he has nothing to benefit from a soulmate, especially if that soulmate is Javert.

“You shouldn’t ask such silly questions, old fool,” he tells Valjean.

“I don’t think it is silly,” Valjean says. “I know you do not like to be reminded of the fact—and, believe me, neither do I—but you have hunted me all your life, Javert. Although you have always done everything, and no more, that was required of you as an inspector, I don’t recall a specific instance where, in my case or another’s, you have shown mercy.” Here, Valjean winces. “I certainly did not expect you to show me any that night, so please, forgive me if I offend you—it is not only curiosity, but also a great amount of concern for your wellbeing with which I ask why you have let me go free.”

“Perhaps I am just biding my time,” Javert snarls. “Who’s to say I won’t go to the station house tomorrow and draw up the papers for your arrest?”

Valjean turns an alarming shade of white. His lips tremble.

Javert only rolls his eyes. “Be calm, man. You look like you’ve seen—no—become a specter.” They have, unconsciously, come to a bridge crossing the river. It’s not the same one Javert stood on all those months ago, but he walks across it all the same, footsteps fast and clunking, leaving Valjean behind, and stops halfway over the Seine. “If you must know,” he forces out of clenched teeth, when Valjean joins him, “and I am not telling you so that you can express _concern for my wellbeing_ , or whatever it is saints do—I will say it because you have a certain right to know. You are a thief, and have always been one—”

“Javert, how can you—”

“On the night the barricade fell, I was prepared to die. You had every right to kill me, and it would have been just had you slit my throat. But you did not. You… you do not know what you have done to me. It was then, I realized there are some things the law has no answer to. It was when you spared my life that I realized it had been a waste. Justice—hah! I have lived to pursue justice, but how could I live anymore, knowing I was wrong? I had been walking down a straight path, but now I had discovered, too late, that it was the wrong one. Turning back, I saw I could never find my way. I decided—I decided, then…” Javert turns to Valjean suddenly, who’s staring at him, mouth agape. “It’s ironic, is it not, old fool, that justice should bear so many meanings from so many mouths across the years, that an idea designed to be unchangeable should be malleable to whoever so chooses to use it?”

There is silence after Javert stops speaking. Then, Valjean lets out a chuckle. Javert’s eyes are drawn inexorably to his lips. Red, he muses, and he has never wished to see that color more.

“Javert, you are right!” Valjean says. “So, that is your quandary. I should have never known, without hearing you say it. Pray, tell me why you were on the bridge that night, too.”

Javert laughs, but it sounds more like glass shattering to his ears. He lies:

“Monsieur, I was looking at the stars.”

***

It is a glorious wedding. At the reception, the bride is quite distraught.

“But where’s Papa gone?” she keeps fretting to herself.

Days later, somewhat of a glorious accident occurs: Javert, on his rounds, sees Thenardier. Just a flash of the all-too-familiar wily brow, but it’s enough for the old hound to pick up the trail. Thenardier turns onto the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, knocks at the door of a magnificent estate Javert recognizes as the Gillenormand house.

Javert waits until the crone’s been admitted, then approaches himself.

“That man who you just let in,” he hisses to the doorman, “I have reason to believe he’s the wanted criminal Thenardier. I am in Inspector Javert, First Class, of the Parisian police. If it all plays out favorably, I hope to arrest him.”

Javert listens to Thenardier and the Baron Pontmercy’s conversation for long enough to gather that the former is trying to swindle money out of that ninny of a boy. Then, he bursts in, cuffs Thenardier, and tries to mollify Marius. The last part proves rather difficult, considering Marius turns paler than a sheet upon seeing Javert, leans heavily on his cane, and intones, “Why, but you’re dead, Inspector!”

There’s a fair bit of sorting out to do. By the time that’s finished (no, Valjean didn’t denounce Madeleine, they were the same man; yes, he saved your life at the barricade; no, he didn’t shoot me, he let me go, can’t you see I’m quite alive, God damn it; shut up, Thenardier), the reinforcements Javert called for have arrived.

“Oh, this is wonderful,” Marius exclaims once Thenardier’s taken away. “May God bless you, Monsieur Inspector! I must tell Cosette. To think that her father is living in seclusion in that tiny apartment of his—oh, we must bring him here at once!”

***

“I don’t understand why you insisted upon meeting here,” Javert grumbles, surveying the finery of the Gillenormand mansion in discomfort as he and Valjean wind around the garden. “You own three apartments in Paris, and I live in one, too.”

Valjean puts a hand on his shoulder, and the constant discomfort around Javert’s Mark mounts into a white-hot pain. He holds back the wince commendably. “I wanted to show you my plot in the garden,” Valjean says.

“Yes, green things growing. I see it.”

Valjean twitches the corners of his lips at him, and oh, Javert can’t help but follow. “Indulge me for a minute or two.”

 _Willingly_ , Javert wants to say. He only manages to dip his chin.

Valjean lowers himself to his knees, pulling a weed out too tenderly, and begins to talk about carnations and strawberries and summer squash. Javert may stand there for fifteen minutes or an eternity, listening to him; he doesn’t know or care. If he were a quarter of a decent artist, he would be able to do a remarkable study of Valjean’s white curls from memory by now. They would be ethereal, and that’s not a testament to his—hypothetical—skill, just a testament to Valjean.

“How’s your daughter?” he asks when it seems like Valjean’s run out of things to say about plants.

Valjean frowns—and that’s not customary, especially when Cosette is the subject of conversation.

“What’s happened?” Javert growls.

What’s happened is this: Jean Valjean, even without his low birth and nearly twenty years of sleeping on a plank of wood, would never be one to feel at home in lavish mansions. Of course, he tries his best, for the sake of Cosette, and her presence almost makes living at the Gillenormand estate bearable, if not for his bed being too large, his pillows too fluffy, tea too fragrant, food too rich, etc. He’d rather the whole house be made into a hospital, but of course, he’d never vocalize his opinions. It’s a good thing Cosette can tell.

“You’re unhappy, aren’t you, Papa,” she asks him in the morning.

“What, of course not. I am always happy to see you. And here, I get to see you every day. I am the happiest, luckiest man in the world.”

“But whenever you cannot see me, you’re not content. Aren’t you, Papa? I know you.” She snickers—not unkindly. “There’s the stench of dissatisfaction in the house wherever you’ve been alone.”

He smiles at her. “My beloved silly girl, you cannot sense that.”

“Is your Mark still gold, Papa?” Cosette asks suddenly.

Valjean grows mute.

“I was heartbroken when I couldn’t find you after the wedding. Oh, it was awful, and I had to keep a smile on for all those guests when all I wanted to do was to embrace you and kiss your cheek. Imagine, then, how horrified I was after learning from Marius that you intended on leaving us—and that he agreed with you, no less! I am glad it was all just a misunderstanding, in the end. Marius told me Inspector Javert was instrumental in bringing the truth to light—what a good friend he is to you! Oh, to think you nearly went away, and I would have never known all the good things you’ve done for me, Papa! I am glad you decided not to go, because I wouldn’t have been able to bear it if I had found out your leaving had been a sacrifice, that you didn’t really want to go, because I want you to stay with me. Just the same, though, I want you to stay for only as long as you want to, yourself. Do you understand, Papa?”

Valjean’s heart is too full to answer.

“I don’t know where she would have me go,” Valjean ponders aloud, in the garden. “How does one even do such a thing—search for a soulmate? I’ve never heard of a single person—I wouldn’t know where to begin. What do you think of it, Javert?”

“You—your Mark is still gold?” Javert stammers.

He cannot help the hope that envelops him in a tidal wave.

***

“I have been doing some research, Papa,” Cosette says to him, later. “There are such things as soulmate registries. I hear they keep a vast record of Marks in England.”

Valjean cannot decide whether he’s horrified or immensely proud. “...England?”

“Yes. London,” she answers, in the tone one would use to confirm milk in their tea.

“Even after all these years… Tell me, is it so wrong to hope?” he asks Javert, later. A part of him wishes Javert will snarl, “Damn the Marks,” as he has expressed in the past. Somehow, Valjan can’t bridge this unspeakable barrier between himself and Javert, even though they are the two people in the world who know each other best, have danced around each other their whole lives in that long game of cat and mouse, even though Valjean _wants_ to. Perhaps that is why they cannot circle closer—they are stuck in their old ways and will be for eternity.

And Javert—perhaps it would be easier if he knew how Javert felt, but Valjean has never sensed anything greater than grudging respect from his enemy-turned-reluctant-friend.

Perhaps that is why he is not surprised when Javert mutters, “No.”

***

Valjean writes to him—short, harmless notes about the weather and food—and Javert writes back once Valjean has reached his residence in London. His own letters are clipped things that reveal nothing of his true thoughts.

 _You’re making a horrible mistake, you old fool,_ is what he wishes he could write. _You should have stayed, and allowed me to tell you all the ways that I am fond of you. I am beginning to forget the way you smile. That is only one thing I am fond of—another is your hair, how it seems to defy gravity, how I always want to smooth it down for you—these are things I only ever imagine telling you. Valjean, I have something to confess: I am almost certain we share the same Mark. Either that or I have deluded myself into thinking so, for how else did I keep finding you out over the years, only for you to make your miraculous escapes? How else did we come to be at the same barricade? How else did we become such fast friends?_

Instead, Javert makes sardonic comments about the weather in England compared to France and drinks more than he should.

Another change Valjean has wrought in him is the praying. Not that Javert is very good at it. In the past, he prayed infrequently, and only to ask the Lord’s guidance in apprehending criminals and bringing justice for those who were honest and good. He doesn’t know how to pray for anything else.

At night, he kneels by his bed, touches his forehead to clasped hands, and tells God, presumably, “I am such a coward. I do not deserve all the goodness that is Jean Valjean. What can I offer him? Nothing! He should be allowed to seek his own happiness, for there is little I can give him.”

And so, caught between these two passionate spectrums of feeling, Javert wiles away the months in gloom.

Cosette visits.

She asks him innocent questions about Valjean’s past, hoping perhaps something will slip. “I’m sorry, Madame,” Javert says, with a tone of finality, at the beginning of her first visit. “That is not my story to tell.”

He cannot fathom why she keeps returning. She’s persistent, he’ll give her that, perhaps taking after Valjean, but she also causes him terrible headaches.

He tells her this.

“Your drinking habits probably don’t help you either, Monsieur,” she says without mercy.

He groans. “Be careful, or you might cut yourself on your tongue.”

The pounding in his skull, coupled with the edging pain of his Mark compels Javert to buy a bottle of laudanum. The drug helps him sleep, but it also draws a hazy veil around his days. Pathetically, he grows reliant on it; without it, he cannot walk from the pain his Mark causes him.

Surrendering, he writes to Valjean on the matter.

The reply seems to be penned in hurried excitement: _Javert- Good God, I scarcely knew your Mark was still gold—you never speak on the subject of soulmates except to curse them! The ailment you complain of seems worrisome indeed. Why have you never mentioned it, if it has persisted for as long as you report? But! a gold Mark upon your skin! I would have never dared guess. For me, it is news, so forgive me when I say I am happy for you, even if you sound so obviously not._

It makes Javert laugh out loud.

Cosette, during her next visit, mentions that her Papa has decided to come home.

Javert spits his coffee back into the cup. “But—has it—has he found what he was looking for?”

Cosette fixes him with a penetrating look. “He didn’t say.”

It has been a year.

***

On a morning after Valjean declared his intent to return to Paris, Javert wakes with no discomfort. He reaches for the laudanum on instinct, then pauses, realizes—

Jumping out of bed, he scrabbles at his Mark, uncovering it, laying eyes on it for the first time in years. In his memory, his Mark reflects the light, and the nice officer is pointing to it, saying, “See? This is gold.”

But now? Javert blinks, thinking it a trick of the light, before he understands, and all the agony that damn Mark has brought him in the last two years floods into his heart.

The area of skin where his Mark used to be is the color of a night with no stars, of a vat of pitch where you can’t see your own reflection, of a raven’s feather, haloed against the sunrise.

His Mark—it’s black.

***

“Forgive me Madame, I didn’t know who else to go to…”

“Monsieur Inspector, what a surprise—”

Cosette’s hair is down. It’s early. Javert has a habit of rising with the sun, never broken out of it from his days at Toulon.

He can’t help himself. “Your father, have you heard from him? Oh God—I shouldn’t… fuck.”

“I’ll call for some tea, Monsieur Javert,” Cosette says, ringing a bell for a servant. “Please, sit down. You think something’s happened to Papa?”

“I don’t know—I fear—oh God, I fear for his life!”

Cosette gasps. “Dear God! Did someone send word through the police?”

“No, not the police.” Javert rushes toward her, almost kneels at her feet, then stops himself when he considers what a sight that would make. “You must be honest with me, Madame. He went to England to find his soulmate. Did he—was he successful?”

“I… I truly don’t know.”

This response only serves to agitate Javert even more. “How much longer before he returns to Paris?”

“Papa left not long ago, so a month more, maybe?”

Javert curses.

“Pardon me, Monsieur Javert. You still haven’t explained yourself. You come in here, fearing for Papa’s life and giving me such a fright, and yet you continue to act so very puzzling!”

“Madame, I cannot—it would cause me more embarrassment than I could bear if I had to explain it to you. I am prepared to tell _him_ , though. ‘I cannot wait any longer,’ that is what I told myself. ‘As soon as he returns, I will confess the true nature of my feelings to him!’ But now—now, I fear I will never be able to.”

“Your feelings?” Cosette exclaims. “Please, stop speaking in riddles, Monsieur Javert! You will not die from embarrassment, even before a lady. You came to me because you had nowhere else to go. Well, you will do what you came here to do—speak. Tell me what you mean, at once!”

Javert’s eyes dart in their sockets like those of a cornered animal. If he were a horse, he’d be frothing at the mouth. It’s fortunate that he’s a wolf-dog, then, because the worst he can do is tuck his tail between his legs and growl a bit, which he does.

“My Mark turned black,” he growls at Cosette. “That is why I fear the worst for him.”

Cosette’s face passes through several shades before settling on one of dark understanding. “I have noticed Papa is… affectionate towards you, but—you really think…?” She straightens her shoulders. A servant comes in with a tea tray, which gives them both a few moments to compose themselves.

“Show me your Mark,” she demands once they are alone in the room once more.

“Are you sure, Madame—”

“Is it in an untoward place?”

“No.”

“Then show me!”

Javert sits, then with jerking movements rolls up his left trouser leg. There it is: sunken into his calf like a bullet hole.

Cosette shakes her head. “I don’t think Papa knows I have seen his Mark, but… that is not where his is, Monsieur Javert. The two of you don’t share the same Mark.”

And what can Javert possibly say to that? Should he be elated or crestfallen? Ashamed or angered? He tries, stammers something, then gives up.

Marius throws open the door of the room with excellent timing. “What’s going on, my dear—ah, Inspector Javert! To what do we owe this pleasure?”

***

A month later, Valjean appears at Javert’s apartment. His clothes are wild and his cheeks hollower, but he looks more alive than Javert has ever seen him. The trip to England, he realizes, has been good for him. Valjean looks like a man who has moved on and is happier with his new situation. Javert regrets everything at that moment, including inviting him inside and making him tea.

“I came as soon as I returned, my friend,” Valjean blurts. “Cosette told me your Mark turned black. I’ve learned a few things while I was away, the foremost being that one’s Mark will hurt if his soulmate is… past the point of recovery. The pain is expected to persist until his soulmate is with God, and then continue no more. Ah, but what am I telling you this for? I am already too late! Your Mark is black. Forgive me, I cannot imagine the suffering you’ve endured! If only I had been here for you… Even if you never knew them, I understand how you must feel about them. They were your _soulmate_ —”

“Damn soulmates!” Javert roars. “Damn them all to Hell!”

Valjean flinches. “I see you still hold the same views as you did a year ago.”

“I didn’t ask for this Mark upon my skin, Valjean! I didn’t ask for my life to be planned out. Who is God to decide who we should love? That is why I say, ‘Damn the Marks!’ Why should I love someone I’ve never met, and may never find? What gives God that power—and then the power to punish us if we choose not to love?”

“I… don’t know.”

“When my mother told me about the Mark on my leg, she said it meant that I would be happy. I told her I would rather be feared. Because if what my Mark promises is love and happiness at the expense of my free will, then I _don’t want it!_ So, Monsieur, don’t come here with your charity and pity, pretending you understand what I have lost— _because you don’t!"_

Javert scoffs at himself, at his stupidity for believing in his Mark, trusting that it would lead him to Valjean in the end, that the feelings seeded in him in Montreuil would blossom, given time. The Valjean before him now lurches back as if he’s been punched.

“I see,” Valjean murmurs.

“You’re a fool.” He doesn’t see a thing, Javert knows, but he cannot bear to tell Valjean. To tell Valjean—would be to destroy himself.

“You are right, Javert,” Valjean continues. “I do believe the two of us began in this world with quite dissimilar beliefs, but through the years we have come to that same realization.”

“And your daughter thought I spoke in riddles!” Javert barks. “Just tell me: did you find your soulmate or not?”

Valjean winces. “Yes. He is a printer living in a small town on the Channel. Our meeting was… serendipitous. I did not seek him out.”

“Then what are you still standing here for? Go, leave me be. You are free, you are loved. Why do we still talk?”

“No, I am not finished.” There is steel in Valjean’s eyes. Javert has never seen him quite like this before. “Allow me just a few more words, Javert, my friend—then I will give you the peace you have been asking for.”

Burning with shame, Javert inclines his head. “Very well.”

“As a young man, I worshipped my Mark. I loved my beloved—my soulmate—and I could scarcely wait for the day I would meet them. Then, as you know, came Toulon. A place like that, it makes you forget about love. For years after I left that place, I did not think myself worthy of love, even while I loved Cosette, I could not believe she would return it in such extraordinary amounts as she has. Little by little, though, I began to believe—can you believe me it was your friendship that first taught me so? I used to dream about my beloved every night when I was young, meeting them, Touching them for the first time—you probably think me so silly—that is why when you told me it was not too late to hope, I went in search for my soulmate, thinking I could forget what I left behind in Paris. I—” Here, Valjean pauses, as if with a moral struggle; a thin sheen of sweat has condensed on his upper lip, and his eyes are stretched so wide in sincerity that their whites show. “Oh, Javert, I’ve committed a grievous misdeed against you, and I cannot ask your forgiveness because I still can’t bring myself to feel sorry for it!”

“You?” Javert practically sneers. “You’re a saint! Whatever you think you’ve done cannot possibly cause me grief.”

Valjean closes his eyes. “Lord, give me strength. I am—I have loved you, Javert.”

Silence. Javert hears the rush of a whirlwind, thinks it a distant storm, then realizes it’s the blood in his ears.

“Valjean…” he tries, but nothing further comes out.

“I know,” Valjean says quickly. “I know it is indecent. I ask you to believe me when I say I have tried to stop loving you. At first, I had hoped that we shared the same Mark, but you cursed the Marks and soulmates so often that I thought you must be without one.” He chuckles. “I was… unreasonably overjoyed when I received your last letter about your own Mark. I thought to myself, ‘Perhaps if I go to him, there is some hope that my feelings will be returned, that he might be my beloved after all.’ But on my journey home, I met my true soulmate. We spoke, I saw the Mark on his chest; it is the same as mine, but I did not love him. I did not want to Touch him. I only wished to finish what I had decided upon leaving London—to confess my crime to you, to tell you that, against all odds, I found myself loving you. To put myself at your mercy. And now, I am here, and you have, or so I hope, heard, for I fear I don’t have the strength to repeat it all.”

Javert’s head is spinning. “But—Valjean, how can you call that a crime?” is all he can manage to sputter out.

Valjean smiles, though it is more a cracking of his lips than anything else, and Javert—there are so many things Javert wants to do. Right now he wants to raise his hand to Valjean’s face and tenderly, tenderly wipe away the sad fragments of that smile until there is only bliss left.

“So, that is what I meant when I said we ended up in the same place, after all,” Valjean says, turning to leave. “We have both chosen to refute the fate our Marks have ordained for us. Although I doubt you will reciprocate my choice—I do not expect you to—I shall return to No. 7 Rue Plumet should ever you need me.”

And Valjean is moving towards the door, and Javert is still rooted in place, paralyzed—and _what the Hell is he doing?_

“Wait!”

He stumbles forward, grasps at Valjean’s wrist, but his hand slides down and fits—into Valjean’s palm. And it’s not a Touch. There is no sear, no burning Mark, only the warm press of Valjean’s hand against his.

Javert bows his head, face hot. “Valjean, I have to—I must ask for your forgiveness. Can you—please—I—please forgive me, for I have been such a coward.”

Valjean’s lips are parted, and Javert stares down at them, yearning to see the red.

“You—I can never explain you to myself,” Javert mutters. “Valjean. I have never wanted a soulmate, until I met you. I have never wanted happiness or—or love, or anything my mother promised this Mark would bring me—until you… I have never questioned what was right and wrong, until I came to know you.”

“Does this mean, Javert…?” Valjean breathes.

Javert cast his eyes skywards. “God help me, I do not know what it means.”

“How long have you felt this way?” Valjean asks. “How long, Javert, have you felt like this and not told me?”

“Since Montreuil, I believe. I did not know it was you, then, but I do now. You are the only thing I have ever wanted—no, forgive me, that came out wrong—”

Valjean only smiles.

“I mean to say… All my life, I have only thought of how to make myself appear untouchable to others. You, at Montreuil, with your kindness and goodness, are the only person who has made me consider that I did not want to be alone forever.”

“Perhaps it was because I was so alone, then, too.”

“Ha, perhaps. I had not thought about that. Although, I did not do much thinking around you—I could never understand how I suddenly thought of everything and nothing at all whenever I spoke to you.”

Valjean’s eyes glazed over. “So it’s true, then. You feel for me the same way as I do you.”

“Yes.”

“Since… Montreuil-sur-Mer?”

Javert dips his head, sheepish. “Will you have me?”

“Oh, listen to yourself—will I have you—of course I will have you Javert! Have I not just poured my heart out for you?”

Javert has never believed that he could feel so weak and soft and strong at the same time as he does now, one hand gripping Valjean’s, watching a dusting of blush darken Valjean’s cheeks. He does not find himself longing to see red or yellow or any of the names of colors he’s learned. This, Valjean in his palm, pressed skin to skin, is enough.

There is beauty in grey, too.

***

“Why in the name of God would you move back to Rue Plumet?” Javert snaps. “When you could have a mansion! And a daughter and son to dote on you! And servants to oblige your every demand.”

Valjean flounders for a bit. “It’s quieter, having my own apartment,” he manages. “And my own garden.”

“Have you forgotten your Cosette!”

“No, no, it’s just—it’s only…”

“Come, old fool, stop making excuses!”

Valjean sighs. “It’s just that… I know how you dislike Monsieur Gillenormand’s house. If I stayed there, you might be disinclined to visit me.”

“Do you really think I would let several floors of fancy furniture stop me from seeing a man I love?” Javert scoffs. “You are really more of a fool than I bargained for.”

Valjean’s smile could stretch around the world, and then some more.

“Oh, shut up,” Javert says, then kisses him—a preemptive strategy. Valjean makes an indignant sound in the back of his throat and closes the distance between them.

***

On a starry night, two weary men stand on a bridge over the Seine. It is not so foggy, tonight, and both of them can see the faint outline of the cosmos against the mostly dark sky.

“I am tired, Javert,” Valjean says. “What is it that you wanted to show me? We walk by this river every day—so much so, in fact, that this morning I was tempted to explore a different route.”

“Look up. It’s a clear night. I just wanted you to see the stars.”

“Oh… they are beautiful tonight.”

“Valjean?”

“Yes, Javert.”

“There is something I have been meaning to tell you. You asked me once, years before, but I lied to you. I don’t know why I did, then, but I cannot keep the truth to myself any longer.”

“Speak, then. Take whatever time you need.”

“That night, the night right after the barricades fell, the seventh of June—I still remember the date… That night, I was going to jump off this very bridge, but you saved me.”

Valjean turns to face him, a solemn smile on his face. “I know, my beloved. I know.”

Javert buckles under the weight of those words, leans against the balustrade and weeps like he has never done in his life. Valjean touches his hair, his shoulders, wrists, feather light touches that feel like kisses. When Javert’s tears are dry, he pulls him into an embrace, their cheeks touching skin to skin.

Later, when they undress in the dark, Javert presses his mouth to Valjean’s collarbone, to the Mark that he can almost see in the dark. And it’s not a delusion, either, when he kisses the star on Valjean’s skin and feels, undoubtedly, the Mark is in the shape of his own lips.

**Author's Note:**

> Salutations, comments, and brutal criticism— always appreciated


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